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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

"The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce Ubuntu 11.04, code-named 'Natty Narwhal'. 11.04 continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. For PC users, Ubuntu 11.04 supports laptops, desktops and netbooks with a unified look and feel based on a new desktop shell called 'Unity'. This version supersedes Ubuntu Netbook Edition for all PC netbooks. Developer reference images are provided for select Texas Instruments (TI) ARM platforms, specifically the 'PandaBoard' and 'BeagleBoard'. Ubuntu Server 11.04 has made it easier to provision servers, and reduce power consumption."

shoved out the door too quickly, just to meet an arbitrary deadline, and a prime example of devs not giving even a nod to the possible needs/wants of the community.
if you are a refugee from apple or ms, this may be the distro for your great grandma. maybe for you, too. but it's a step down, if you thought U-10.10 was Pretty Good!
in the desktop mode, many fine tweeks to the speed and performance of the distro, but the eyecandy and 'toys' are annoying at best, and pose an obstruction to useful and easy work: especially the lack of scroll bars, and the astonishing load of desktop "junk" upon log in. you gotta see it to believe it.

attempts to load the Alternate edition in console mode only, from the command line resulted in consecutive total crashes. attempts to upgrade from 10.10 via the console also produced a Black Screen of Death.
unusable.

Would you recommend the product? no | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 2

Pros:

It is Linux, kind of

Cons:

Bloated, Rushed, Very slow compared to older versions

Been using Ubuntu for years, but this release forced me to find somewhere else to go. I've migrated both my machines to Debian and am very happy. Unity is a smoldering pile of crap. On a machine with 256 MB of video memory and 4 GB of RAM, Unity felt VERY sluggish. It also felt very dumbed down, and does not offer very many customization options. The menu navigation in Unity makes it very hard to find applications because each application's item takes up an insane amount of screen real-estate. Even running the classic Gnome Desktop it runs extremely slow compared to Debian with Gnome. If I tried dragging Totem around while a video played the whole desktop would start dragging until I stopped. The installation also does not offer very many options in the way of customizing your installation. If you want to install server programs, you've got to download the server edition and use another CD, or install them manually after installing your edition of choice. If you want to use Ubuntu, go with 10.10 or earlier, because all 11.04 is going to do is make you angry. Otherwise you can go with a more stable distribution that is less worried about rushing out entire releases every 6 months, and more worried about producing a quality product.

Would you recommend the product? no | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 4

Pros:

Errrr.....

Cons:

Slow, irritating desktop

They've tried to tart it up and have succeeded in spoiling my distribution of choice for the last few years. There is the option of the Ubuntu Classic desktop which I couldn't switch on fast enough, unfortunately it's still slow, just typing text into LibreOffice drove me mad as I had to keep looking up to see if it had got around to filling the letters in.

Voted with my feet and installed Fedora, works great and hey, guess what? I'm typing this post without having to wait for the characters to appear onscreen :) I do miss apt-get/Synaptic though but that's something I can live with.

@Ubuntu - You've messed up with this one but I'll give you a four for having the confidence to try something new, just make sure the bloody thing works better before launching next time!

Would you recommend the product? no | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 1

Pros:

None that I can detect

Cons:

Takes seconds for typed texts to appear on the monitor

I succumbed to whimsy and upgraded from the wonderful, stable Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and my computer behaves as thought somebody poured glue into its innards.
Just about everything is slow except those things that are slower.
Matthew

This is what I use when I'm trying to defect others to the Linux world. Sets up real easy, too. Yes, it is for noobs, but sometimes you just need something that works. I'm OK with Unity, but it needs some work. Waiting for 11.10!

[Edit]: I've defected to Arch, but I still would recommend this to noobs.

Would you recommend the product? no | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 1

Pros:

Can't think of one!

Cons:

Where do I start?

Utter trash
I've been using Open Suse for a number of years, and decided to run Ubuntu along side windows on my family/media PC.
I used the wubi - the windows installer to install this version of Ubuntu. Imediately after installation I fell out with it. It's slow the GUI is cluncky and awkward to navigate. I tryed to use the software installer, and imediately hit a brick wall with dependancy issues. I thought i'd gone back 10 years distro wise!
So I'll not be using or recomending this to anyone.
Back to Suse it is.

I cannot believe the negative reviews I am seeing on here. As a precaution from all the negative reviews I dual booted 11.04 with 10.04.2 LTS on a 100 gig dell lap top. I find myself using 11.04 more then 10.04.2 Installed google earth and wine..everything working perfectly!!! Thank you Ubuntu team for a new and obviously free product.

Would you recommend the product? no | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 3

Pros:

It's Linux, which is always good.

Cons:

Extremely slow and sluggish

I have been using Ubuntu Linux for almost 3 years and I have loved every minute of it until now. I have to say that 11.04 is the most disappointing of all the upgrades I have experienced. I want to try something else, but I have no clue as to what is what. The technician that first introduced me to Linux is no longer around. If anyone out there is willing to introduce me to something else, I would really appreciate it.

Would you recommend the product? no | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 4

Pros:

hmmmmmmmmmm

Cons:

slow, hangs, can't find my way in it

Unfortunately, most of the mentioned cons go for me too; managed to hang Unity within an instance, not being able to get it back; ok, back to Ubuntu classic - well, after a very short time that simply meant back to another version, I just could not seem to find my way around in this version - none of the goodies I got so used to seemed to run properly anymore. If indeed as I have read version 11.04 is the last one to come with a 'classic' desktop, I don't think I'll install it very soon again...

After testing several distros other than Ubuntu I decided to go with Xubuntu, since Ubuntu seems to have the most available programs (if I am looking for something it is always there).
Result: a very flexible and extremely fast OS, would recomment this one to anyone! It did give me some problems over the past few weeks, but with the help of the XFCE-forum they were dealt with in an instance!

Would you recommend the product? no | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 1

Pros:

It is Linux!

Cons:

Unity

The default Gnome with Unity just contributed to formating the harddisk again after the installation of Ubuntu 11.04. Sure, you can use Gnome classic or other wm, but that is not an excuse for upgrading or update to Ubuntu 11.04, at least not for me. One can continue with Ubuntu 10.10. However, I changed completely to another distro (Slackware) because I dont like the way Ubuntu is taken with more computer-hungry desktop effect junks and inbuilded unnecessary packages.

Am running Kubuntu 11.04. This is my first linux (am a linux newbie), and on a netbook too. Runs great, although I had to work at making everything work well (firefox, java, flash, etc.) Stable enough and the UI is quite nice. Downloaded the Oxygen theme plugin for firefox which made it quite cool. And also installed a firewall (ufw) and antivirus (avast!) to protect everything when I move occasionally back to Windows to do backups (just an old habit of doing it from there using EaseUS Todo software).

What I really don't like:
It just drinks the life out of my battery. Just for that, I might soon look up some alternative distros. Am still learning what's out there; thank you everyone for your informative posts.

I have a mid-high end machine with 8Gb of RAM and a decent graphic card thus i didn't suffer any slugghish problems as reported before by somebody.

Anyway the system is really stable, it works immediately out of the box, it has all what is needed by a traditional Wind0ws user. It is a good starting point for newbies too.

P.S. Tested the Unity interface: awful. (think that i'm in love with gnome from the project itself starts...) I noticed that in 11.10 release Gnome2 will not be supported. For that i switched immediately on Xfce 4.8.

Would you recommend the product? no | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 2

Pros:

Easy for ppl coming from touchscreen interfaces

Cons:

Trashes system if upgraded from 10.10

I upgraded from 10.10 (as suggested by Software Update) and that was the beginning of my misery. On rebooting I got the Black screen of death. Later I realized that if let it be for a while it eventually boots up. Once in, I came face to face with Unity and now am loath to use Ubuntu 11.04.

This is my first experience with Linux and I love it--especially not having to worry about malware-virus stuff as much. It runs fine on my laptop-with 2GB ram. I am not interested in being a Linux guru and could really careless about using a terminal. I am into GUI and it is great in Unity. Then again, I really don't have anything to compare it to except my Win Pro machine. I want to edit photos, surf, write and play with progs--all which it does very well in my book. Got to love free also.